Abstract
We study whether firms avoid financial disclosures to preserve the financial privacy of their owners. We find that firms named after their owner, where firm disclosure would more directly expose owner information, are more opaque. Eponymous owners prefer firm opacity especially in rural and anti-capitalist areas and when disclosure would expose attributes with high social stigma, such as, (relatively) high wealth or debt levels. When firms are forced to disclose, eponymous owners change their firms’ names more frequently and new firms are less frequently named after their founding owner. These findings suggest that privacy concerns at the owner level may dampen disclosure incentives at the firm level.
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